Babayaga

pay someone for something. But do not fear, it will not be so bad. What, you think I want to hurt you? You believe those awful stories the village fathers tell their stupid children to keep them enslaved at home? ‘ Oh, do not go into the woods, there is a woman there who will eat you. ’ Bah. We are going to help each other, you and me. It’s a small price, a little help. That is all I need. Only a little…”
    Now, in the small Parisian apartment, methodically collecting the scattered owl pellets from the windowsill, Zoya reflected on what that exchange had, in truth, cost her. Elga had taken more than a little. The price staggered her mind and flooded her with dark emotion, so she tried, as she so often tried, to shove the thoughts away and shut a heavy door on the past. But she never could succeed for long, the memories always pushed their way through.
    First, there had been the child buried in her belly. That decision was one she felt she had to make, but the memory lurked in her, a ghost that had never ceased to burn. Allergic to the past, whenever the recollection came it was so clear in her mind it caused her throat to constrict, making it hard to swallow. Only when she traced the memory thread along its twisted path, seeing again how stark her lack of choice had been, could she let go of the guilt and let herself breathe again. Elga had led her through the logic of that painful conclusion the very first night and then taken her through the bloody purging. The old woman nursed her to recovery in the days that followed, the ordeal creating a bond between the women, Zoya now feeling that there was one soul on earth looking out for her, while Elga observed the girl’s grit and strength and silently counted the ways her newfound friend could be of use.
    Whenever the sharp regrets stabbed at her, Zoya reminded herself that the child she lost had been conceived in violence, a bloody curse that had followed her from that moment Grigori seized her in the bedroom until the night she screamed as Elga tore it from her body. Every good thing since then had been tinged with the red stain of that violence. Time was not absolute, and even without witchery she could travel right back to that instant, loom above it, and watch the last vestige of her simple humanity pulled out of her, a dark mark punctuating the end of so much innocence. She came up out of that bath a new creature with a new path and purpose, and with Elga’s guidance (which was always as twisted as a weed root in drought), Zoya began a course of action that had its own logic, rules, and blunt necessity.
    As the season began to change, the two women had wrapped themselves up and begun journeying the cold roads together. They never returned to those woods. For decade upon decade they covered the breadth of the continent, rarely resting for long, a year here, a few months there. They went in all four directions, wherever loose fortunes and safe travel could be found. When armies advanced, they followed in the rear guard’s wake, sharing spoils as their luck held solid. They had more than a few narrow scrapes but had always managed to escape clean, packing up and making their tactical retreats, before any real pressure was brought to bear. They were generally careful and quick, looking for sparks of suspicion in observers’ eyes so that they could be gone long before the thought ever reached those watchers’ minds.
    Their exits almost always coincided with funerals, and Zoya could count her victims the way Homer counted ships. Legions of soldiers, brokers, barons, bailiffs, and fools had all fallen before her. Murmured instructions into the ears of sleepy-eyed Arabian horses led cavalry lovers to broken necks, and she had coaxed the arc of battlefield bullets and the aim of cannons’ muzzles into many a cursed chest. Some farewells came with great repercussions—a fever sent up a sleeping vizier’s knobby spine had once brought a whole kingdom down—though most were simpler transitions, a few even humane, merely a touch of the unwanted slipped into their tea or a fumbling foot on a loose stair, sending masonry hard against the victim’s head.
    No one had ever looked to her for explanation; if she was ever noticed, it was only as a discreet courtesan, a rumored inamorata, or a laughing, playful harlot, always so easily forgotten.
    She did have a quiver of curses reserved to make the bad ones suffer, and the bullies and savage sadists ultimately met